


No sense of ceremony

by deathorthetoypiano



Category: Scott & Bailey
Genre: F/F, and Gill taking the piss out of her, and have been sort-of writing for weeks, but who doesn't want Julie Dodson being all soft about a dog, this is daft fluff that I was very much put up to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2727224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathorthetoypiano/pseuds/deathorthetoypiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julie promised herself, when she moved into her house, that she'd get a dog when she retired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No sense of ceremony

It wasn’t the same without her.

Turning up at MIT and having no chance of running into her around any given corner, no prospect of passing an easy few minutes in her office between meetings, no excruciatingly important phone calls answered with “hiya, Slap”, nobody to laugh with at conferences and reception evenings, was dull.  It was empty, in a way that made no logical sense. 

Or, at least, no sense that Julie wanted to think about for long.

She always thought she’d come back, some nice consulting job with a big office and a huge pay packet.  But she never did.  She pottered around, and took up yoga.  She started to write a book, because everyone said she should, “what with everything you’ve seen,” but got bored, gave it up, and didn’t worry about it.  She finally learnt to cook properly, and went on holidays, and decorated the spare room.  And every time Julie visited, she seemed that bit happier.  It was soon glaringly obvious just how long Gill had been struggling, and how this had, despite all the difficulties, come at the right time.

But two years of isolation took their toll.  Two years of having nobody to bounce off, nobody that she trusted well enough to let them help her, nobody that she felt she could call on a weekend to rant about the big bosses without feeling like she was overstepping the mark.  Two years, and she finally lost her nerve.  It wasn’t like when Sammy was born, when he was little and she took that other job, or when she zipped around the country being brilliant everywhere.  That had an end.  She was still there.  She still could come back.  But this, this was forever, and it got to the point where Julie couldn’t hack it.

Eventually, against all the odds and everything she’d ever believed, she, too, got sick of blood.

Blood, and filing, and minions, and suits, and press conferences, and procedure, and no longer being utterly certain that the answers she was giving were the right ones.

And so, Julie, too, handed in her badge.

 

She had been retired just over a week when she remembered the promise she’d made herself when she moved into the house twelve years before.  And just a few weeks after that that she called Gill, asked her to come over, refused to say what for.

She met her at the door, pulling it almost closed behind her as she stepped out onto the drive.  “You’ll have to be really quiet,” she murmured, and bit back a laugh as Gill immediately adopted a comical spy pose, crouching a little and pressing a finger to her lips like a child.  “Perfect.”  They crept through the door and along the hall, and Julie pressed an ear to the kitchen door, listening for a moment before turning the handle.

The door had barely opened before Gill was engulfed in a flurry of grey hair and wagging tail, and Julie couldn’t speak for laughing, could only watch, helpless, as Gill slid down the wall and tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid getting her face licked.  As the dog turned his attentions belatedly to Julie, she caught her breath enough to say, grinning from ear to ear, “Gill, meet Buster.”

Gill’s head fell back against the wall, an eyebrow arched incredulously.  “You’re having a laugh.  Buster?”  At the sound of his name, Buster bounced over to her again, but calmed a little, settling for her scratching behind his ear as she looked expectantly at Julie.

Julie knelt down before them, reaching out to scratch behind the other ear.  “He came with the name, so I can’t very well change it, can I?”  Gill’s eyebrow arched higher in an expression that Julie had often seen crack young detectives, confess their wrongdoings and mistakes and everything else besides.  But it had never worked on Julie, until now, as she looked away, blushing furiously.  Luckily for her, at that point Gill’s composure cracked, her laughter filling the hallway, and Julie’s head, until she gave in and joined her.

As the laughter died into a comfortable silence, they stayed on the floor in the hallway, even after Buster got up and wandered off.  It was only when he started whining at the back door that Julie got to her feet with a sigh.  “You were out all morning, you daft mutt,” she told him, bending down to scruff his head and laughing as he tried to lick her face, ducking away and almost falling over.  She forgot, until she heard her laugh, that Gill could see her from the hallway.  “Shut up.”  She stood, let him out, then turned back to Gill and stuck her tongue out.  But the way that Gill was looking at her was something different entirely, something that she couldn’t simply bat away, and all her playfulness and teasing vanished as she asked, softly, “Wine?”

The gentle shake of Gill’s head, the way she closed her eyes, just for a moment, was a surprise.  “No.”  Julie tried not to be obvious, or questioning, but Gill went on anyway, getting to her feet.  “I promised it would stop, but it... it was harder than I anticipated.”  There was a flicker, then, of the Gill who had struggled so much, who had had to drink at work and push people away and never admit to any of it because admitting it means there’s a problem and Gill Murray doesn’t have problems.  Julie swallowed, and waited.  “Just put the kettle on, Slap.” 

Julie turned to fill the kettle, staring out at the moors and getting so lost in them that it overflowed, water pouring over her hands and so cold that it made her shriek.  Gill was beside her immediately, taking the kettle away, turning off the tap, taking her hands, reached for a towel and dried them.  Julie watched her pat between all her fingers and rub beneath her knuckles.

“Thank god the water wasn’t hot.”  Gill didn’t pause in her task, beginning to rub circles over her palm to warm them, turned each hand over to inspect them.  “You’re staring.”  Julie flinched, pulled her hands away and pushed them into her pockets, wondering whether her cheeks were as red as they felt.  But Gill followed her, crowding her, fingers closing around one wrist to catch her attention.  “I didn’t say,” she began, paused as Julie looked away, waited until she looked at her again before continuing, “that I minded.” 

Julie dragged her free hand over her face, desperate to look away but knowing, really, that she couldn’t.  Not now.  Not after all this time.  “Gill,” she murmured against her palm, trying to fill the silence, to ask a question without having to _ask a question_.  But Gill merely smiled at her.  For years, Julie had wondered how Gill’s officers had looked quite so terrified when she smiled at them, but now, suddenly, she knew.  It was more than a smile.  It was a smile that said, in no uncertain terms, that she held all the cards, and would win every game even when it looked like she might not.  Julie moved her hand, dropped it to her side.  “Gill,” she said again, louder, clearer, with more hope that other words would follow.

Buster barked outside the door, and made them both jump.

“No sense of ceremony, your dog,” Gill complained, squeezing Julie’s wrist a little more firmly before letting go so she could open the door.  Buster hurtled inside, skidding across the tiles and into Julie’s legs, tail going so fast it was a blur, licking her hand, jumping up at her, then turning to do the same to Gill.  “None at all,” she continued, pushing him down and scratching his ears, “just leaving hair all over the place and ruining the moment.”  She looked up, then, with a smile that felt secret, even in the kitchen, with nobody to see.  Julie blushed, again, was torn between wanting to run and wanting to find out what came next.  Her inclination was to run, to tear across the moors like she had once done several times a week, alone under the sky.  She could outrun Gill, easily, could leap a fence or two if necessary.  But then she’d never know, and her indecision froze her to the spot, until Buster wandered off and she had no choice but to stay.

“By moment,” she ventured, finally, curling and uncurling her fingers in a rapidly failing attempt to calm herself, “what do you mean exactly?”  She managed, by some miracle, to keep her voice fairly steady, but she could herself beginning, very slightly, to shake.

Gill, on the other hand, of course, seemed perfectly composed, as she straightened up.  “Well, before we were so rudely interrupted,” she replied, conversationally, as though she were talking, perhaps, about the traffic or her mother’s weekend plans, as though Julie mightn’t notice that she was moving closer and closer until there was barely an inch between them, “I was going to kiss you.”

The bottom, surely, had fallen out of the world.  The clocks had stopped and the sun was shining and there were no awful people out there doing awful things to one another.  Certainly her heart was no longer beating and her legs were jelly and she was in no more control of her own body than she was of the moon as she leant in, so close that she could feel Gill’s breath, and feel her hold it, too, as she murmured, “Then for godssake, shut up,” before pressing her lips to Gill’s. 

She expected, despite all the signs to the contrary, that Gill would suddenly freak out, instant regrets that would tear her away and have her running home with little more than a hurried wave.  She did not expect, could not even hope to expect, Gill’s hands to slide around her waist and her neck, holding her there as she turned, deliberately, backing Julie against the sink.  She could not have imagined, even when she’d tried, the way Gill looked as she pulled away, just far enough to look her over appraisingly and grin, then kiss her again.  She could not have known that it would be quite like this.

And when Buster got bored of entertaining himself, he announced his arrival with a nose pushed between them and a snuffling bark that sent them into a mess of giggles.  The winter sun was long gone from the garden and the kitchen was rapidly getting dark, and Gill seemed perfectly happy to fall off the wagon, plucking a bottle of wine from the fridge and making her way to the sitting room, followed by a very happy-looking Buster.  Julie stayed behind, washing up two glasses, hanging up the towel, getting her head in order, and by the time she caught up it was completely dark out.  The curtains were closed, and the two of them were on the sofa, Buster curled at one end, and Gill resting her head on him, her body stretched out, fast asleep.  Julie’s heart threatened to burst as she crept in, silently setting the glasses on the coffee table and settled on the floor, her head by Gill’s shoulder, twisted a hand awkwardly to scratch Buster’s chin, and waited for the inevitable, but now, probably, very different, “hiya, Slap”.


End file.
